1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of position measurements, and more specifically, is in the field of improving the quality of position measurements.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In the prior art, there are several methods of improving position measurements by performing the operations of filtering and/or smoothing of obtained position measurements. The prior art also discusses different ways of improving measurements by performing sensor fusion, that is by combining a number of measurements performed by a plurality of sensors in order to obtain a higher quality position measurement as compared with a position measurement obtained by a single sensor. For instance, the well known in the art Kalman filter significantly increases the accuracy of Global Position System (GPS) position measurements by combining Global Position System (GPS) measurements and the Inertial Navigation System (INS) measurements.
However, the prior art methods of improving the quality of position measurements do not teach how to improve the quality of position measurements of an object in a situation when a previously available source of high quality position measurements becomes unavailable, and only a low quality source of position measurements is available.
What is needed is a method for substituting a high quality source of position measurements with a low quality source of position measurements when a previously available source of high quality position measurements becomes unavailable, while minimizing the degradation in quality of position measurements due to switch from the high quality source of position measurements to the low quality source of position measurements.